More than 40 years ago, Ed Camara was coaching his stepson’s U-12 soccer team in Houston. A father donated money for uniforms. But as was often the case back then, the goalkeeper supplied his own.

With a tournament looming, Camara wanted him to wear more than a pinnie. The requirement was simple: adult small, in any color besides blue.

The one soccer store near Camara had nothing. Neither did the only other soccer store he knew, 45 minutes away. But the owner there called a tennis store, which somehow had the only adult small, red goalkeeper jersey in the metropolitan Houston area.

The keeper’s father – attorney Sam Torn – told Camara he should open his own store.

“I’m an engineer,” the volunteer coach replied. That’s why he was in Texas – he moved there for work in 1979. But he’d lost his job a couple of years later, during a recession.

And he did have a soccer background. From the time Camara was an infant, his father — half-Portuguese, half-Italian — had brought him along when he played on weekends. His father went on to found the Hicksville Americans youth club on Long Island, New York; his mother coached a girls team.

Camara did not play organized soccer until junior high school. But he made the team – and was the best one on it. He earned All-County honors, and was recruited by Clemson University coach I.M. Ibrahim.

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